The Applicant of the present invention has developed a system for digitizing use of a pen and a writing surface. A writing surface, such as a paper, is provided with a position-coding pattern. An electronic pen is used for writing on the writing surface, while at the same time being able to record positions of the position-coded surface. The electronic pen detects the position-coding pattern by means of a sensor and calculates positions corresponding to written pen strokes. Such a position-coding pattern is described e.g. in U.S. Pat. No. 6,663,008.
The position-coding pattern is capable of coding co-ordinates of a large number of positions. Thus, the pattern can be seen as forming a virtual surface or reference surface which is defined by all positions that the pattern is capable of coding, different positions on the virtual surface being dedicated for different functions, or services, and/or actors. As described in US 2003/0061188, the virtual surface is typically logically divided into different subsets, wherein a subset may include confined areas of the pattern. Such confined areas may have a size corresponding to that of physical pages, and therefore be denoted pattern pages, each pattern page being represented by a unique page address.
It is possible to capture written information in a digital form by writing with the electronic pen on a writing surface provided with the position-coding pattern. This may be utilized in capturing information from forms for filling in information by writing. In this regard, each copy of a form may suitably be provided with a unique portion of the position-coding pattern to enable distinguishing between information filled in on different copies of the form.
The writing surfaces may be designed to provide human-understandable information for guiding a user in entering information on the writing surface. In designing the writing surface, a portion of the position-coding pattern is coupled to the human-understandable information. Also, controlling software may be designed to associate instructions for handling strokes of a pen in different areas of a writing surface. The controlling software is associated with a portion of the position-coding pattern such that detected positions by an electronic pen may be associated with specific instructions. Thus, the written information may be appropriately handled by the electronic pen or a computer system to which the written information is transferred.
It may be important that different designs of writing surfaces are not associated with the same portion of the position-coding pattern, since this may cause confusion if a pen user uses a first design for entering information and the pen or computer system uses controlling software corresponding to a second design for interpreting the entered information. Therefore, a top controlling actor may issue licenses to portions of the position-coding pattern to ensure that only one party receives a right to handle each portion of the position-coding pattern.
Thus, as shown in FIG. 8, a party 800 that wants to use electronic pens for capturing information may design writing surfaces and use a license received from the top controlling actor to associate a portion of the position-coding pattern with the design. In this regard, the designer 800 uses a dedicated software tool which facilitates creation of the design. The tool may further associate unique position-coding pattern with each copy of the design that is to be printed. When a design is to be printed, the software tool provides a graphical representation of the design and the position-coding pattern. The graphical representation may be provided e.g. as a postscript file suitable for being transmitted to a printer for printing.
If the party (designer) 800 wants to print a large number of pages, the printing may be advantageously performed by a print shop 810. In this regard, the designer 800 would like to send the graphical representation to the print shop 810 for printing. However, since the unique position-coding pattern requires that each copy of the design is individually defined in the graphical representation, the graphical representation will require a large amount of data. Thus, very large files need to be transmitted to the print shop 810, which is not practical. Further, the postscript file does not allow the print shop 810 to adapt the printing of the position-coding pattern to changing conditions at printing, which may affect the printing quality and hence the possibility for an electronic pen to detect positions. Moreover, the designer 800 and the print shop 810 need to interact so that the tool may form an electronic document that is adapted to the specific printer or printing press of the print shop 810.
In order to overcome these problems, the designer 800 may instead transmit only the design of the writing surface. In this case, the designer 800 will also need to transmit the license to the position-coding pattern to the print shop 810, such that the print shop 810 may be able to couple position-coding pattern to the design. Thus, substantial processing needs to be performed at the print shop 810 for preparing a file to be printed. Also, the designer 800 will need to transmit the entire license to the print shop 810, thereby loosing control of the license. Further, the print shop 810 will also need to run the dedicated software tool for associating the design of the writing surface with position-coding pattern.